The Virgin Suicides
Ratings226
Average rating3.8
3.5. I think I'm biased because I loved the movie when I was a teenager. (yikes)
I liked the vibes but i wish the narrators weren't the little weirdo neighborhood pervs. I don't mind that aspect of the story itself because it really paints the picture of how “elusive” the girls seem to be, but I definitely would've preferred an omniscient narrator.
anyways, rip to the Lisbon sisters y'all would've loved Lana Del Rey.
i don't really have the words to describe how i feel about this book right now but what i think is that it was very smart. i really liked it!!
can't stand the writing and it was tough to finish. I just know if this book was written in a style i liked, i wouldve loved it
i saw reviews that complained about the lack of “deeper meaning” to this book, and i'm a bit confused because the meaning isn't that deep but poignant nonetheless. i think this book could spark important conversation amongst those of us who are well enough to discuss mental health and help those in need. but it's... really not that (much) deep(er).
this book is a story of what happens from an amalgamation of 1) parental emotional and mental abuse 2) poor mental health and mental health stigmas 3) and apathetic fanatacism. these girls were stifled by their parents and then kept at arm's length by the society around them, and y'all are looking for “deeper meaning” than that? uh uh. nope.
i'm especially not about romanticising suicide, so if you're trying to look deeper in that sense, don't @ me. this story is tragic and heartbreaking and a warning signal for those of us still making fun of teenage girls for the littlest things.
time to watch the movie cause i'm so sad i finished it and wish i didnttttttt it was v good but like let's get a perspective of the girls !!
i'm not rating this because i only read one chapter, but there were so many things i did not like about this book already:
- the boys putting the lisbon sisters on a pedestal from a distance, meeting them properly, then deciding they weren't as pretty as they thought they were
- the blatant misogyny from almost every male character - boys sneaking into the girl's house, attributing a suicide attempt for jealousy over a BOY (which was pure speculation), even their father saying how dramatic they all were on their periods eye roll
- RACISM. direct quotes “he looked frail, diseased, and temperamental, as we expected a European to look” and “he came murmuring with his oversize jaw and loose lips, his tiny Japanese eyes...“
- ableism - the r-slur and m-slur are both used to describe a boy with down syndrome
in this book's defense, it was written in 1993 so there was a different standard of what was politically correct at the time. it makes me happy that in the 2020's we strive to read books from the aforementioned people groups that were the butt of the joke in older literature. this being said, i don't really feel like using my leisure time to continue reading a book that uses language i morally don't agree with.
La mejor manera de despedir mis años adolescentes. Prosa que te hace querer cerrar el libro y saltar de emoción, ver el mundo por los ojos de chavos idiotas como si fuera la primera vez. Quiero leer este libro cuando sea un hombre viejo.
What a book. Wow. This book was beautifully and exquisitely written. Eugenides has a real talent for writing some incredible sentences and passages that have stayed with me long after finishing the story. This book is a story that is fundamentally deeply disturbing and morbid and I rather guiltily devoured it. It was intense and left me fascinated and enamoured by it. The Lisbon girls have an enrapturing quality that left me transfixed and obsessed with them just like the boys within the plot. I felt the story was so intriguing that it's still stayed with me. This book beautifully and painfully exposes familial suicide in 1970s Michigan. It's a phenomenal story that I simply adored.
Rating: 3.1 leaves out of 5Characters: 2.75/5 Cover: 2/5Story: 2.75/5Writing: 4.75/5Genre: Classic/Contemp/LitFicType: AudiobookWorth?: MehHated Disliked Meh It Was Okay Liked LovedBoy oh boy I had an itch to read this. Something came up and I wanted to watch the movie once again, hadn't in YEARS, but then decided to read the book first. I had never done so before so I was eager to get into it. What I like about the book is how they make it feel whimsical in a way. Kind of like you are on a high and want to spin around with the fairies. It was very much like a modern retelling of a Shakespeare play. I also like when the story finally got around to the sisters. The whole book could have been a bit shorter if the author did spend time on a lot of nonsense. I know it was being told from one of the guys POV and all of that but like... it dragged. But it was poetic in a way. Though... maybe not from... a teenage boy POV.I get parenting is hard, but if you are so far stuck up your ass where you can't see where you are hurting your kids... well YOU are a problem. Did I like the movie or book better? Eeehh I think I like them in their own way. The movie was straight to the point more so than the book.Also Trip is a dick. A good punch to the throat could make me feel a bit better.
2.5
It had potential, but in the end, I couldn't stand the book and its content anymore. It was very intriguing at first but I grew bored from the narrator's perspective after the first chapter.
Soughted out after watching the movie that equally captured a brilliant narrative voice and interesting rich story. Really really good, engaging and tragic. Really delves into the perspectives of the young boys viewing the Lisbons and the oppressive forces they face. Amazing
I just finished reading this book and have to say that I was bothered by it. I saw the movie quite some time ago and was bothered by it as well, and thought that maybe by reading the book I would gain a little more insight. Well, I guess in some ways I did gain a little insight.
The book is about the 5 Lisbon sisters: Lux, Mary, Therese, Bonnie and Cecilia, one of whom commits suicide fairly early in the book (Cecilia), and then aftermath from her suicide which leads to the suicides of the remaining sisters. The story is told from the point of view of the teenage boys who observed the sisters over the course of the year between the first suicide and the last, and all of the “evidence” they gathered which they were hoping would help explain to them why these girls did what they did. These boys (who are grown men as narrators) were just as bewildered as I was after reading this. The 4 remaining sisters are made into prisoners in their home, which can drive any teenager to do rash things (like runaway for one), but not these girls. They were prisoners of parents who thought by protecting them from the world, they would not have the same fate of the first suicidal sister.
Jeffrey Eugenides has written an interesting book. I enjoyed his book “Middlesex” and found that this book had a lot of the same issues of angst and acceptance that the character in “Middlesex” had to deal with. That's where the similarities end. Eugenides has written a book that discusses teen suicide which is always a shocking event when it occurs, and it leaves all of us wondering “why?”, “what was so wrong that they chose this way to deal with their problems?”. That's exactly what the narrators in this book are asking themselves, even with all of the knowledge they had of the girls and the neighborhood at the time, these men still (after all the years that had passed) ask themselves “why did the Lisbon girls do this?”. The reader is also left with that question gnawing away at the end of the book. I have no idea, given everything that is laid out in the book from the POV of these men, why these girls felt this was the way out from under their overly protective and domineering parents. The parents were only trying to protect them, and that protection made them feel like prisoners who felt there was only one way to escape. I think that's what bothered me most, that these girls thought there was no other way out from under their parents and therefore, they had no other choice.
Okay, put this one down under the “don't let teen girls read this”–no unfounded aspersion on girls, just personal experience. First read: wow, how romantic and beautiful, in the midst of life we are in death, am I right, the suburbs sure are evocative. Interim: wow, death and teenage girls get romanticized a lot, that's really concerning, this book celebrates that, not cool, the male gaze sure is dangerous. Second read: OH THAT'S THE POINT, DUH, also the suburbs are still really evocative.
I loved how it was told from the male gaze. It meant that the story was haunting and we know very little about the Lisbon sisters.
My only negative experience with this book was the many references to their bodies as if it really mattered (especially since the narrators seem to be grown men with wives recalling the body of a teenage girl), and what really made me laugh was how a vagina was described as a beast with fur and “otter insulation”. It didn't ruin the story, but it lingered in my head even when watching the movie. But I know this infatuation is purposeful. It's kind of the whole point. Besides that, I truly loved this.
some of my favorite quotes (probably everyone else's too, I'm not very original):
“We felt the imprisonment of being a girl, the way it made your mind active and dreamy, and how you ended up knowing which colors went together.”
“if we were to be honest with ourselves, we would have to admit that it is always that pale wraith we make love to, always her feet snagged in the gutter, always her single blooming hand steadying itself against the chimney, no matter what our present lovers' feet and hands are doing.”
“It didn't matter in the end how old they had been, or that they were girls, but only that we had loved them, and that they hadn't heard us calling, still do not hear us, up here in the tree house, with our thinning hair and soft bellies, calling them out of those rooms where they went to be alone for all time”
I ... have no idea how I feel about this one. Oddly detached? Sometimes Eugenides got in his own way and the flowery writing dragged me out of the story? I'm glad I'll get to discuss it with my book club.